The new year has started and it is superbusy! This year I will be following my very last course and make my very last exam (for the master at least). The final course I will need to complete is Security and Cryptography. Here we talk about how your data can be encrypted properly using modern techniques.

Security and Cryptography

In this course we talk about what “Secure” means and how to secure data. To understand the modern techniques we also look at examples of old, broken, techniques. The lab is quite interesting, we get to break cipher text to show the weaknesses of old encryption methods. It really helps to gain some understanding on the matter. This course is tele-lectured to Twente, meaning that students from that university see the lecture over a video-stream. The system is not always working perfect, but in theory it’s a really nice system to follow courses from another university while being in your own university.

Let’s go to Groningen

Dutch students are eligible for a public transport subscription that lets them travel throughout the entire country for €0,- (it’s valid either midweek or in the weekend, outside the chosen timeframe we get a discount of 40%). My subscription ends soon, so to “celebrate” I went to Groningen by train with my girlfriend. Although the Netherlands is a small country it still takes you almost 3 hours to get from Delft to Groningen. We left in the early morning to visit a “Behind the Scenes”-programme at Schiphol Airport (fun thing to do!). Afterwards we travelled to Groningen. In Groningen we visited several board-game shops and walked around in the city center. After a delightful dinner at “La Cubanita” we were ready for the next 3 hours in the train. When you get to Delft, La Cubanita also has a branch in Delft, definitely check it out at the Beestenmarkt. You can order unlimited tapas there for a affordable price.

Groningen – Facades built from beer crates and dinner in La Cubanita

S.O.S., I have time left? What to do?

Okay, time left might be a bit of an exaggeration. However, during the holidays I finally got to do some of the things I wanted to do for a longer time. For instance at the end of August I went karting with a group of friends at RacePlanet Delft. At certain times they combine the three individual race tracks to bigger tracks so it’s really cool to race in such a heat! You can see what it looks like in the impression on their website.

Other than this I mostly visited friends, family, attended birthday parties and I worked as well. I work at bunq, but next to that I also help out some teachers with their courses. For example I recruited the Teaching Assistants for a course and I’m helping out as a assistant in the very first programming course for the Computer Science freshmen. I remember like yesterday what it was like to sit in those lab sessions while I had no freaking clue as to what to do. Things changed, luckily, now I know a little bit more. 😉